I'm a fan of RAID 1 since it is mirroring rather than striping and works with only two disks (cheap). As long as at least one disk is working, you lose no data. So if you put all three discs in a RAID 1 array, and you light two of them on fire, the system will still operate on the one remaining disc, you won't even notice it other than the warning messages (and smoke).

RAID 5 would give you performance and redundancy. You can lose ONE disk in a RAID 5 array. The system will continue to operate with reduced performance. When you replace the failed disk, it will automatically rebuild and return to normal operation. If you lose two disks, the entire array is toast.

The last file server I built had two RAID 1 arrays in it, with two disks each. One array had the OS, software, etc (C-Drive). The other other array was for storage ("M-Drive"). So, the OS doing shit didn't bog down file access. And the file access didn't bog down the OS doing shit. And if the OS, being windows, decided to shit itself, it wouldn't take the file storage with it. And both had redundant drives so you could lose one drive in each array and still be operational. This proved itself to be worthwhile. They've been through two or three drives since then without a single moment of downtime and no lost data.

Hahaha. Basically, with a RAID controller, you can connect multiple hard drives together into an array that is recognized as one big drive. Depending on what "style" array you use determines the benefits you get including redundancy if a disc crashes and increased read/write speed.

I should mention that I work for ATTO Technology. A company that makes high end storage/RAID controllers and probably should have known the answer to this. But hey im just a tech i dont design any of that crap just fix it on the hardware side lol

I just think its sorta ironic that a work for a company like this but still dont know that much about it